The Kilkenny Observer Newspaper is delighted to present our ‘2025 Christmas short story series’. We invited five Kilkenny based writers to submit a short story or poems each week, which we hope you will enjoy. This is the Observers fifth year promoting creative writing in the community.
Week four sees the work of Bob McLoughlin.
What if you could be young again? What if it was Christmas Eve and you were eight years old and pretending to be asleep in your bed. Down in the sitting room the tree is full of twinkling lights, decorations, and memories.
How the week before Christmas your father had brought home that tree. He was a man’s man. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a deep gruff laugh. Whenever he brought anything home it was as if he had hunted it down and killed it in the wild. He would often walk in the door with a swagger announcing he had the tree, or a toy, or home-baked food from Grandma or whatever. Then he would toss it on the floor and stand over it with his hands on his hips gleaming with pride as if he had killed some ferocious forest animal—or so it seemed to you.
The day before Christmas, your impish mother quizzes you on whether you thought Santa was going to come and what he might be bringing you. It’s funny how easily you get caught up in her imagination. She tells you stories of Santa and how he knows who has been good and whose been bad. And you worry.
So, you lay wide awake in bed. Solitary confinement. Time to let jolly old Santa do his job. He is a busy man, and you needed to do your part. You lay there staring up at the ceiling, listening for the slightest indication of reindeer hoofs on the roof. You try to sleep with one eye open. You would be ready.
After an eternity your mother finally shouts to you. “Santa has come. If you hurry you might still be able to catch a glimpse of him.” You run out of your bedroom falling into the living room only to see the front door to the house ajar and the cookies and milk half gone. Your mother has placed a large strand of white cotton on the tree. She says, “Look, Santa rushed away so quickly that he caught part of his beard on the tree.” A souvenir you’d share the next day with all your little friends.
What if you grew up, got married and had children, as people often do. At Christmas when your children were small you started talking about the elves working away at the North Pole. You told them that Santa was busy reading their letters while the elves created presents that children had dreamt of all year long. You tried to answer their questions but had no idea how much the elves got paid, where they slept, or whether they had children of their own. You told them that all you knew was that they were always cheery and loved making presents for children.
Carollers calling
There were carollers, some of them familiar, who came to the door singing Christmas songs in imperfect harmony. You stood with your children in the long lines of anxious kids waiting to see Santa on the stage of the local community centre. You reassured them that yes, he really is Santa. Holiday music played in every store and public buildings were decorated with flickering lights. Bethlehem manger scenes took the hard edge off of city courthouses and Garda stations.
What if your children grew up, moved out, found partners and had children, as people often do. What if one adult child moved to Australia and had two small children. While your other adult son moved to London where he had a busy job and found it hard to find time to visit. His Christmas Day would be spent with his in-laws who made a big deal out of dinner and drinks for their own adult children and friends with titles. Your son and his family would visit after Christmas and he would fall asleep watching the match on the television in the sitting room, exhausted from it all.
What if your wife died after a long illness. Now your two children take turns having you to their homes for Christmas, even though Australia is a long way off. At least you wouldn’t be alone. But their children are now teenagers who aren’t too interested in old people and preferred cash to presents. Christmas family dinners are now always in a hotel restaurant because it’s so much easier.
Asleep on Christmas Eve
What if you were taking your daily walk in the town where you have always lived, now without your long dead wife. And as you walked you remembered being a small boy and pretending to be asleep in your bed on Christmas Eve.
How your mother would turn all your Christmas complaints, worries, and moans into the most exciting time of your year. How’d she’d call into your bedroom lit by the early dawn light, “Time to get up. Santa Claus is just leaving.” Running and slipping you’d sprint into the sitting room, now full of wrapped boxes, and the front door would be half open with a bit of Santa’s beard caught on the Christmas tree.
How your present opening is a flurry of tearing, ripping, yelling, touching, playing, showing, and thanking. This Christmas your father bought you the gift he had always wanted himself as a child. A train set complete with bridges, a town, a timber mill, road crossings, and tiny people. He has it all set up around the Christmas tree and through the sitting room. You play with your new gifts late into the morning until your mother says to her blurry eyed child that it was almost time for Christmas dinner, that your grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins would soon be arriving. There would be laughter, games, dinner table stories of heroics, and memories of those gone to the great beyond.
What if you could have that again? Wouldn’t that be the best Christmas ever.
Bob McLoughlin has lived in Callan for the last 20 years. He has six self-published books and is currently working on a second memoir.
